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Month: November 2016

For today, I’ve decided to share a simpele line that my Company Sergeant Major dropped me as a parting shot as I step into the last few days of active national service. He said it in mandarin, and in perhaps fewer words, but the meaning has been largely retained even as I translate and make the line somewhat more fluent. I think it is a wise piece of advice, and possibly wiser than he himself could have imagined it to be. Make of it what you will. Here it goes:

“The best thing to say sometimes, is to not say what you know or what is immediately in your mind; it could very well turn out to be your greatest asset to let not the other know what you have in mind.”

Freaking Waffles of a place
That a student’s ability is measured
Through a mention of its name
By a mere whisky of its fame;

So what if we didn’t?
What is a student worth then?
More than a school name surely,
More than a great badge really;

By association we are no different:
We belong in the same league
Play by the same One Waffles street
Considered too the same Waffles breed;

What is the individual then?
What is the collective then?

I have no right to complain:
I graduated from there just the same;

But make no mistake:
We succeed by ourselves
Supported by a great place
To run ourselves our own race.

(Disclaimer: I love my school; I’ve always loved it. I did reasonably well and I had some of the best schooling years there. It’s a lovely place, and all other stereotypes are needless. I’m proud of the school, and someday the school shall be proud of me too. To transcend the school reputation and make good as an individual to live a life of kindness and purpose, that is what I believe to be the reason for the greatness of the school.)